Kate's Letter Jan. 18, Highlights

Sister Coles and I studied the signs of the 2nd coming for companionship study today, which is always fun :) In light of that and recent world events, I want to give you a list of things that will be important to have now and in the near future:

1. a TESTIMONY of the gospel and especially of Jesus Christ as our Savior (see the parable of the 10 virgins)

2. fresh, clean water (enough to last a few months)

3. something to keep you warm for an extended period of time in case you get stranded in the dead of winter without any heat (like Romania and the Ukraine right now)

4. LIGHT (refer to the parable of the ten virgins again)-- although in a more literal sense: candles, matches, flashlights...

5. Food of course (year's supply, rotate through)

6. Hope, love, and faith (see number 1)

See Proverbs chapter 31-- a virtuous woman is not afraid of the snow for her household, for all her household is clothed in scarlet. I've been trying to find out what this scripture means by scarlet though-- what do you think?

But in spite of all of this ominousness, I can honestly tell you I'm not afraid right now-- hard times have and will undoubtedly come, but if we stand firm in the faith of the gospel of Jesus Christ we have no reason to fear. An age-old curse of Terry Pratchett's Discworld series is "May you live in interesting times", but I like the fact that I live in interesting times! It's just like my mission: many people reject me and my message every day, but if there's anything I can say about my everyday life, it's that every day is interesting. Every day brings many new interesting people to talk to with interesting and varied views about life, a new question to consider and study about, a new food to try and new Polish words to learn and do my best to pronounce. No day ever turns out quite the way that I expected it to (for better or for worse) and every day brings a new opportunity to grow and to lift the people around me up.

Some cool (and unexpected) things that happened this week:
Muaimmer (one of our Turkish investigators) invited us over to his house on Friday. He, us, and 3 of his friends who are also Turkish students studying in Poland sat in their prayer room, where they all meet on Fridays to pray towards Mecca. We all shared the similarities and differences between our religions in the spirit of love and understanding. They showed us a video of the Koran's version of the birth of Jesus Christ (remarkably similiar but yet crucially different from the account in the Bible) and told us their views about God and prophets. We taught a little bit of the Plan of Salvation (Muslims also believe in multiple heavens) and testified of Jesus Christ as the living Son of God and of living prophets and apostles on the earth today. Instead of having a structured lesson though, we just answered each other's questions about our different religions and shared the things that were most important to us with each other. It was awesome-- we could tell that all of those men we met with were good, honest people who live their religion and sincerely want to find out more about our church and our point of view. It was cool to see how, propped up right next to their copy of the Koran in Arabic and Turkish and other sacred books, was the Turkish Book of Mormon we gave them.

Yesterday night a lady who had investigated the church 6 years ago saw my nametag and came over and talked to us on the bus. She was really excited to meet us-- she said she had lost contact with the missionaries when they got transferred out and 3 new sisters she didn't know came in instead. She gave us her phone number but didn't set up a time to meet with us, so we'll see what happens-- the Lord provides for such miraculous meetings to occur but it's always up to them and their agency to actually show up to the meeting... but definitely a cool thing to happen nevertheless.

Sister Coles and I met some amazing people on the street who I'm really excited to teach this week- and Ekin is still keeping his promise to live the word of wisdom (at least until Jan 20, because we only got him to promise to go without his hookah for 3 weeks- so he could see the difference in his life). He believes in the Book of Mormon and comes to church every week, but he thinks it would be too hard for him to join the church- too much opposition from his family in Turkey and too much social pressure from his friends in Poland. We had one of the members, Wiktor, on the lesson with us, who had the chance to tell Ekin how much opposition he faced (and still faces) from his Catholic family and everyone at school, but how he joined the church anyway because he knew it was true. And how he would make the same decision no matter where he was from or what religion his family was. Wiktor's awesome. He's 17 years old and despite being the only person his age in the entire branch, and in spite of what his family thinks, he always faithfully comes to church and institute, and comes with us on lessons whenever he can. I have so much respect for the members here in Poland. They're such amazing people!

We had a good New Year's here too. One of the members, Bożena, invited us over for dinner and then all of us missionaries went back to the chapel to hang out together and wait for midnight- but at 11:00 pm, we got a call from the zone leaders telling us that we all needed to be in our own separate apartments- and that we weren't allowed to be hanging out together. Our whole zone (at least 20 missionaries) had no idea and just assumed that the rules would be the same as last year. Apparently something got lost in communication. But as soon as we found that out, we all headed back to our own apartments and Sister Coles and I got home just in time to watch all of the fireworks from our balcony. In Poland, all fireworks are legal on New Year's (even the big stadium ones) and everybody all over the city lights them off. There were big fireworks in every direction for at least half an hour solid and sporadic ones well into the night after that. We still had an amazing view from our balcony and after they'd died down for the most part, we got to go inside and get right into bed, rather than fight through crowds to get home at 1 in the morning, which was nice. The next day all of us missionaries met together to celebrate the New Year, and we opened bottles of non-alchoholic fruit champagne and sprayed them out the window at noon instead of midnight. It was still way fun. And the streets were completely empty on New Year's Day. All of the stores were closed, because everyone in the entire city was sleeping.